Having to learn how to live without you is a lesson I wish I had never learned
An Honest Confession
The air itself feels different as if the world had been breathed out. I’m breathing in a space where your laughter used to dance. The sun used to be a partner in our shared warmth, but now it shines with a scorching lack of care, casting long shadows of my loneliness over the scenery of our love that used to be so familiar to me.
The curve of the armchair where you used to curl up, the smell of coffee in the morning air, and the books we read together, their pages now dog-eared with silent thoughts—everywhere I look, I hear your name. The thought of your hand being warm on mine is like a cruel illusion in the desert of loss.
Learning to live without you is like walking on stilts because you’re always out of reach. I’m on the edge of forgetting while my whole body holds on to the memory of your touch. The world keeps going, not knowing about the earthquake inside me. The seasons change with a callous apathy that makes the winter in my soul laugh.
But even in the thick darkness, there is a spark of rebellion. This lesson, which is stained with the acid of not having it, will not define me. I’m going to put together the broken pieces of our laughing and your smile and turn them into a mosaic of strength.
I miss your love, but it’s like a ghost map that helps me find my way through the maze of loss. It’s still there in the way my eyes wrinkle when I think of your jokes and the way I hum our favorite song to myself. It is a star in the sky of my heart that helps me move forward even when it is very dark outside.
So I take one step at a time, carrying you with me in the beat of my heart and the pace of my breath. Even though this trip without you is lonely, there is still hope. Because I will grow my own strength and song in the quiet places where your presence used to bloom.
When the road flattens out and the sun shines on my face again, I’ll know that I have not only survived but flourished. I will have learned to live with the ghost of your love, which will play a piece of bittersweet music in my heart and show how strong love is by not being able to erase it.
This, my love, is not the end. It’s the start of a new story, written in tears and memories. It’s a story about being strong, finding light in the darkest places, and taking you with me as a torch, not as a burden. Because your love lives on in my soul, like a word in the wind or a star in the night, even though you are gone.
© Shuvranil Sanyal, 2024
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